The Supreme Court springs a surprise: respect for the Catalan language

There is a judgment which the Supreme Court handed down on the respect owed to the Catalan language which quite literally left me dumbfounded when I read it.

It says:

The act in question entails a “…risk to the internal solidarity of the Spanish people…

…when ideas are aired which are demeaning to a distinguished vernacular language, even though spoken by a minority, the free private and social use of which is respected and guaranteed by the Spanish State,

in that the grievance expected to result from said text may kindle sources of rancour which have now, happily, been overcome and

hurt genuine collective sentiments in the region affected, which are not incompatible with basic, healthy, national patriotism,

… leading to a sentence of 8 months imprisonment and a fine of 10,000 pesetas for illegal propaganda.” (1)

Yes, you did read that right, pesetas!

Because the Supreme Court was upholding a judgment passed by the Court of Public Order (a Francoist court!!) in 1969 against the editor of the weekly magazine Destino for publishing a letter denigrating the Catalan language.

Here is a translation of the letter itself:

Barcelona, 18th of October 1967

“Catalan is finished…

Dear editor of Destino,

I read the letter by Mr F. Vernis published in your excellent magazine.

I think you will grant me the right to reply, because I feel that the subject of his letter concerns me. I am the father of three children, all of whom attend municipal schools, and I am one of the parents who have not accepted that our children be taught Catalan. As parents, we owe our children a distinctively cultural heritage. I do not think that learning the Catalan dialect is culture. I congratulate myself and the 40 percent of parents who refuse to consent to their children learning Catalan.

I am Catalan and I think it is a mistake to continue to speak our dialect. We must accept the facts: in Barcelona more and more Catalans are speaking Spanish and making our children speak the language of Cervantes. At home, we have spoken Spanish for some time and my children are punished if they speak a word in Catalan. Likewise our friends, many of whom have followed the same path and others who speak Catalan, speak Spanish with us.

We must accept that we are , first and foremost, Spaniards. Spain is one, with Madrid at its head. Therefore, I applaud the idea that Lérida might join Aragón and think it very fitting that the name of Catalonia be changed to that of Northeast Region. I am delighted to see that Catalan is finished. I give it about another five years. Instead of studying Catalan, perfecting a command of Spanish will do more good.” (2)

The ruling irrefutably demonstrates the standpoint of the highest legal body in the land regarding Spain’s vernacular languages during the dictatorship.

As chance would have it, the second paragraph of the reader’s letter also describes the extent to which Catalan was taught at the time.

IDEOLOGY CONSISTS OF IGNORING FACTS WHICH DO NOT SERVE ITS TAKE ON HISTORY

The most representative pro-independence political and intellectual forces argue that Catalan has been the victim of “persecution and prohibition”, not to mention “cultural genocide” (3).

No historian other than a staunch supporter of independence would ever use the term genocide in such a context.

No historian, that is to say, other than one whose true vocation is political.

To rely on such an unquestionable, unitary vision of history, in which persistent malevolence towards the Catalan people -passed down from Spanish ruler to Spanish ruler without fail for three hundred years- explains everything, is to rely on a fallacy.

And to ignore the changing interests and diversity of interests of the Spanish people over the centuries is to display a form of intellectual dishonesty.

Deceptive, unilateral interpretations of history of this kind are only worthy of politicians and advocating ideologs with their own interests at heart.

Never that of a sceptical historian aware that inquiry, unlike creeds, knows no eternal truths.

Scholars would be more exact: to prohibit and to prosecute are not the same as to ban official and limit public use.

A scholar would also provide national and, particularly, international context.

Out of honesty and respect, a scholar would also avoid using terms so readily associated with the kind of bloodshed witnessed in Nazi Germany or Rwanda.

But of course, an author doing this cannot stir such a degree of revulsion, or contribute to the cause.

Now lets state some facts. The dictatorship debased us all.

It seized power in the cruellest possible way. It brutally curtailed our freedoms. fiercely curbed our civil right to participation and swiftly dispelled any notion of popular control over government.

It negatively affected our moral development and, on top of a costly war, also held back our economic development in the first two decades after the civil war.

Not only did it severely skew our moral compass for some time but also compounded the economic hardship which followed a costly war by direly mishandling the economy for at least two decades.

It zealously stifled all political expression contrary to Spanish nationalism and in favour of the other types of nationalism Spain is home to, and did not promote the use of other Spanish languages.

But, as this sentence from the Supreme Court proves, it did not, through its legal and, therefore, state action, persecute any of our languages, let alone commit cultural genocide.

But then again, we should not expect absolutely anything from nationalist historians.

Like creationists discussing the evolution of life, they are never going to acknowledge anything which does not confirm their indubitable, irrefutable and (suspiciously) causally hyperperfect worldview.

As if the social sciences were like physics or chemistry, whose laws apply throughout the universe regardless of the point in time!

Here is just one of many shameful examples:

The photograph above shows the programme of an “academic symposium” run by an institution attached to the Office of the Presidency of the secessionist government devoted, according to the director, to the historical study of the “animosity” against and “plunder” of Catalonia (4).

They don’t even word the proposition as a working hypothesis with a question mark at the end!

Why bother, if they know the answer before they even address the issue?

They state the conclusion and then find people to uphold it. I don’t understand why this has never occurred to other researchers!

If only Ramon y Cajal, the Spanish neuroanatomist and Nobel laureate (5), had known!

How much further he would have got and how many hours on the microscope he could have spared himself!

THEY’RE DUPING US, BUT NOT IN THE WAY YOU MAY THINK!

But don’t be fooled, these historians are anything but ignorant, let alone naive.

They are not trying to pull the wool over our eyes with their fictional story.

They are by no means incompetent or unaware of how societies or, indeed, their own profession works.

Quite the contrary, they specialise in studying historical changes and, moreover, many of them are well established in their field.

Nevertheless, just like professional athletes (or politicians), they cheat every which way they can.

Because they are perfectly aware that winning is what matters at the end of the day.

Come what may, success justifies everything.

How many drugs do you think that famous bodybuilder, later Governor of California, has taken in his life? How many French citizens have you heard condemn the infinitely cruel and unnecessary revolution which gave way to the Republic?

Historians know this better than anyone.

And they also know that historical change comes with the arrival of a new idea: a social truth.

That is to say a truth in the minds of certain people, like the Lutheran Reformation was in its day, for instance, or like the alleged cultural genocide of Catalonia.

Whether it is actually true or not is of little consequence.

Because what most of these social truths really reflect is a change in the structures of power. Be careful! A top-down, not a bottom-up change.

In the two examples cited above, what we have are an attempt to bring an end to the power of Rome as the sole source of legitimacy for the Monarchs of Europe and an attempt to undermine the sovereignty of the Spanish government in Catalan affairs.

Once created, these social truths take on lives of their own. Because more than individuals, we are, above all, social animals and we draw on the knowledge that society provides us with in order to survive.

We need truths as much as food

Merely by existing in more than one person, all truths, even when they fly in the face of the evidence, have the power, and rather a considerable power, to convince and survive.

They have lives of their own, which go on regardless of reality, as occurs with homeopathy or the laying-on of hands in medicine.

Our ideas come almost entirely from the social truth we live in. In general, and in this case quite specifically, magnified and imposed by the structures of power.

People born in Tunisia are Tunisian and Muslims. It’s not a question of faith; there is simply no other option. There are sure to be some Muslims who convert to another religion, but they will always be a minority.

In the case at hand, the question is whether pro-independence -using truths, half-truths and plenty of untruths- will ever become an objective reality: the Catalan Republic.

Time will tell; it is impossible to predict, one way or the other.

Because social truths need one more thing before they can leave the realm of the imagination and become objective truths: some kind of correlation with reality.

As the pragmatic Obama reminded Trump, the master of social truth, at their first official meeting: “reality has a way of biting back” (6).

The author, a business graduate and professional politician from 1977 to 2003 publishes a paper, without any shame or remorse, in an educational journal sponsored by the Catalan Government, calling himself a “historian”.

Excerpts from the first paragraph:

“There is no room for doubt that the main aim of General Franco’s military uprising was to destroy the Catalan people.

This process of annihilation was put into practice by obliterating the political institutions which made Catalonia unique on the one hand and by devastating its culture and doing away with its language on the other.

Catalanophobia was ultimately the common denominator and cornerstone which politically united and militarily cohered all the doctrinal factions which made up Francoism.

This ideological conglomerate was categorical when it came to planning the cultural genocide of Catalonia”.

5. de Castro F, Merchán MA. 2016. Editorial: The Major Discoveries of Cajal and His
Disciples: Consolidated Milestones for the Neuroscience of the XXIst Century.
Front Neuroanatomy 13;10:85. Full text available here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=PMC5062747